Solace
by Bm89
Summary: Tuckson oneshot. Ed comes home after a hard day at HNT. Little bit of drama, a few chuckles. Lots of Tuckson-y goodness. Enjoy.


**A/N: I don't even know… Let's say this is post Heartfelt Passages, pre Paris (still scared of writing that…). Had a plot bunny and "Giving You the Best That I Got" by Anita Baker helped it along. Nothing is mine except the sequence of the words…**

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The relaxing notes of Anita Baker are playing softly from the speakers as she reads, knees bent, iPad resting against her thighs. She hears a key in the door and looks at the time. Almost eleven.

Since his transfer to HNT, he's been keeping weirder hours and they've had to reschedule twice this week, between her cases and his. She misses him. Noah does, too. _Where's Ed, mommy?_ He'd asked her.

She tilts her head down, focusing her gaze above the frames of her teal blue reading glasses, toward the door. When he appears, her eyes are sympathetic. He looks frazzled, ragged. Too much intensity on too little rest, after too many years.

"Hey," she greets him, her voice soft. She is surprised to see him, but she doesn't let him hear that.

He takes off his jacket, hanging it on her coat rack, loosening his tie next and removing that. "Hey." He sounds beaten.

"You okay?"

He moves toward her, bracing himself above her with a hand on the back of the couch and leans down to kiss her lips. Her hand comes up to caress his cheek as he pulls away.

At her question, he nods. "Tough one today," he shares simply.

She tilts her head, a somber but understanding look gracing her features. "Want to talk about it?"

He gets on her about sharing things like this, not bottling up the hard cases and letting them eat her from the inside out. But truthfully, it's something that they both have had to learn to do: share. He hasn't exactly always been an open book when something's bothering him, either. But together, they're learning. To be there for each other, and to let each other in.

"Not yet," he shakes his head. She knows he will, eventually. When he's had time to process. She's the same way. "Can I sit?"

Wordlessly, she bends her legs further at the knee, giving him space at the other end of the couch, but he shakes his head, dissatisfied, before lightly tapping her hip and tilting his head toward the coffee table. She raises her eyebrow at him, smirking. Her couch isn't that deep, and he wants to lie right beside her, between her and the back cushion.

It's going to be a tight squeeze, but she indulges him, shifting to give him space to settle while simultaneously making sure she doesn't fall off the edge.

It's awkward, the way he has to navigate, moving over her body to get beside it, and he ends up falling half into the back cushion and half onto her, causing a loud groan at the unexpected body weight pinning her down.

"Sorry," he mutters, shifting against her.

"That was graceful," she observes sarcastically with a chuckle. He hums in response, settling into her side. There's not an inch of him that isn't pressed to her.

He nestles his head against her breast, finding comfort in the supple softness, the cushion. He moves his head over it, over and over, before she finally says something. "Ed…" He can hear the smile in her voice.

"What?" His voice is muffled.

"Comfy?"

"Not quite," he says facetiously, continuing his movements against her, his ear brushing over her nipple through her nightshirt. Finally, he stops. "That's better."

He can't see her face, but her lips are lifted in a smirk.

He slides his hand over her stomach as she continues to read, and he takes in a few sentences before she turns the page.

After a moment, he asks her, "What's it about?"

"A girl looking for her mother." She turns another page.

"Is it good?"

"Mhmm." He stops talking then, not wanting to distract her, and instead his mind goes back to the case, the op he was working that kept him so late. There was no blood spilled. A victory. Score one for the good guys… but it weighs on him nonetheless, the emotional intensity of the past few hours draining every drop of energy he had. He's depleted.

She reads a few more pages before his proximity and the hand on her stomach become too distracting. She closes the app, locking the iPad before she puts it on the coffee table along with her glasses. She turns off the music and covers his hand with hers, drawing lines down the back of each of his fingers.

"I didn't think you'd come here tonight," she says. She wants to wrap her left arm around him, scratch his scalp like she knows he loves, but it is losing feeling somewhere underneath him.

"I missed you," he replies. "I tried to get here in time to see the little guy, too, but…"

"I know." She understands. They both do. That's part of what makes this relationship work as well as it does. "We both missed you, too."

"Am I crushing you?"

"A little," she acknowledges with a chuckle. She lowers her left leg, the one closest to him, and he throws his left leg between hers, shifting so his weight is more evenly distributed between her and the couch.

"Better?"

"Mhmm," she confirms.

They sit in silence for a few moments and his breathing evens out to the point that she thinks he's fallen asleep, but instead, his voice breaks the stillness. "How was your day?"

She almost wants to laugh. With their jobs, any given day can, and often does, mean death. Pain. Sadness. Helplessness. "Not bad, considering," she finally answers.

"Any headway on the new Sergeant?" His hand dips below the hem of her old t-shirt, and she takes a deep breath when she feels the skin of his palm on her stomach.

She shakes her head, "No word yet." Amanda had taken the test, Fin still refusing to, but 1PP couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to approve the promotion for the detective. Her history with the NYPD wasn't as muddied as Nick's had been, but there was still cause for concern. Olivia knew it; Amanda knew it. At this point, it was a waiting game.

Ed and Olivia are both lost in their own thoughts for a moment, before he breaks the silence again, this time on a whisper. "I don't know what I would've done…" At her silence, he clarifies. "Munson."

"I know," she says. Did he hear a crack in her voice?

In the aftermath of Dodds' death, she spent time with Lindstrom trying to overcome her own feelings of inadequacy stemming from her perceived role in what happened that day, trying to assuage her feelings of survivor's guilt. _If only I hadn't left him in that house…_

What she didn't realize, not until later anyway, was that Ed was carrying around turmoil of his own. The situation with Munson had brushed much to close to his deep fear of losing her. As much as she wished she had done things differently to save Dodds, Ed couldn't help but wonder if she'd still be here if she had.

 _It wasn't your time. It was Dodds'._

He shifts, bracing himself on his right elbow, lifting his head from her chest and turning to look at her. The brown eyes that stare back at him are the softest he's ever seen.

For almost the entirety of their relationship, she's been the one having to lean on him – for one reason, one psychopath or another. But she wants the balance to shift; she wants to be a rock for him as much as he has been for her.

"You know I'm here, right?"

"I see you," he quips, trying to lighten the mood.

She chuckles despite herself. "Ed…"

"I know," he stops her, squeezing the skin of her hip in acknowledgment. "I just needed to be with you, y'know?"

She gives him a small smile, reaching a hand to his face and pulling him toward her. "C'mere." He smiles into her lips, pecking hers softly a few times before letting his lips linger in a longer kiss. When they release, she whispers, "Feeling better?"

"Not quite," he teases. "Kiss me again."

She smiles, bringing his lips back to hers, and this time it's a deep, searching kiss, her tongue finding his in his mouth. The groan he emits makes her buck her hips into his leg, which still rests between hers, and his hand shifts up so it's covering her breast.

They have gone from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds.

The room is full of heavy breathing and the sound of their lips as they slide together in one scorching kiss after another. Finally, tired of the angle, they both try to shift so he can rest between her legs instead of off to the side. But her positioning on the couch is already precarious, and their movements are clumsy.

Before they know it, she lands with a thud on the floor.

"Oof!"

Silence.

"Shit, Liv, are you okay?" He hangs off the couch, reaching toward her. She's flushed, her eyes are closed, and her face is contorted to where he can't immediately tell if she's laughing or in pain. "Liv?"

Then: laughter. "I'm fine," she breathes. "God, that hasn't happened since high school…" She laughs some more, and his face softens, a smile breaking out on his lips.

"Jesus," he says.

They look at each other, both smiling, faces pink from arousal and the humor of the situation.

Her eyebrow lifts, and she levels him with a smirk. "You gonna help me up, or come down here and finish what you started?"

He chuckles, resting further into the couch cushion, lowering his hand to graze her stomach with the backs of his fingers. "If I go down there, Liv, I don't know if I'll ever get back up again," he jokes.

"You're not that old, Tucker." He smiles at this moniker. She called him that for years and, more often than not, it was venomously. But now, it was the name she reserved for their more playful and/or amorous interactions. "Noah keeps you young."

"He's not the only one."

They look at each other, the smiles fading as the moment turns serious once again. Finally, she pulls herself into a sitting position. "Okay, help me up. This floor isn't as comfortable as it looks."

He gets off the couch, reaching out his hands to her and pulling her until they are chest-to-chest. He cradles her face in his hands and kisses her softly, gently. "This is why I came here," he tells her.

"To push me off the couch?" she deadpans, a small smile on her face.

He makes a face at her before kissing her nose. "No. You make the world seem like maybe it's not such a shitty place after all."

"As you do for me," she whispers. She kisses him, suckling softly on his lower lip as she pulls away. "Let's go to bed." He gives her another look and she chuckles. "I said _nothing_ about sleeping. Relax."

Hand-in-hand, they walk toward her bedroom, shutting the door behind them. She knows there are still things he'll need to talk about, things he wants to vent, get off his chest. And she'll be there for him to listen when he does.

But, for now…

 **##**

 **A/N: Wanted to step outside of my 'You and I' universe for a hot second. Not thinking this is a story I'll continue beyond a oneshot, but never say never… Thanks for reading. Thoughts?**


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